News

Sfogliatella is the shell-shaped Italian pastry we all need in our lives

It’s hard to improve on the croissant, but we reckon an Italian pastry might just have the edge. Called sfogliatella, this shell-shaped confection is made of hundreds of flaky golden leaves and traditionally filled with sweet ricotta, semolina and candied orange peel.

The pastry originated in Naples at the Santa Rosa convent, some 400 years ago. Legend has it that a nun was preparing biancomangiare, a baked semolina dessert similar to blancmange, and made some modifications to the recipe, spreading it between dough covered in lard and sugar. The resulting magnificent puff pastry evolved at a local restaurant into the ricotta- and semolina-stuffed creation it is today.

A tower of beautiful, golden sfogliatella. Photo: iStock.

To make it, the pastry is rolled or passed through a pasta machine until very thin and transparent. It’s then rolled into a cigar before being sliced into discs, which are stretched into cone shapes and filled with a sweet ricotta-and-semolina mixture.